YES, SYDO
Yes, Sydo stems from six years of sustaining a relationship through tragedy and comedy; mutual and different expressions of grief and pain. Yes, Sydo investigates the dialectical dilemma of giving and receiving odynia, or pain. Yes, Sydo asks how pain can serve other purposes. How and what may pain, receiving and delivering, communicate when mobilised in a radically different system? Can we make a promise, like Circe, to only use magic for good old fashioned mutually agreed upon, even when limited, pain?
Yes, Sydo, Danielle LaFrance and Josh Rose’s group collaboration, explores how poetry and sound can meld into an alternative form using Homer’s epic Odyssey as its anchor. Yes, Sydo was spurred by a challenge made by poet Catriona Strang during LaFrance’s November 2020 performance of her book JUST LIKE I LIKE IT (Talonbooks 2019). Strang jokingly inquired whether or not LaFrance would next take on Homer’s Odyssey as she had with his Iliad in JLILI’s first section “It Makes me Iliad.” Here, LaFrance created 24 poems in Homer’s dactylic hexameter that mutated Iliad’s 24 books and focused on the overarching theme of force as defined by mystical theorist Simone Weil as “that x that turns anybody to it into a thing.” While LaFrance laughed off the challenge, warning Strang how difficult it would be to turn it down, Rose was forming a proposal to turn it up. The last three years have made LaFrance and Rose Iliad all the more with the growing incursion of oppressive systemic conditions soldering social subjects to a dynamic of profit over people, forcing them “into a thing.”
Yes, Sydo looks to the rich tradition of adaptations of this classic text such as Rolf Riehm’s 2014 opera based on the myth Sirenen - Bilder des Begehrens und des Vernichtens (Sirens - Images of Desire and Destruction) to the Coen Brothers’ 2010 crime comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou, but it also aims to twist the tradition by creating content that interrogates dominant Western canon. Odyssey takes up where Iliad left off; it is the residual aftermath of war, suffering, and rage recounted by shifting perspectives, including Odysseus and his son Telemachus, whose identities are masked, stolen, and forced to demonstrate throughout the epic poem. What differentiates Odyssey from Iliad is how perspectives of minor characters, from women, servants, slaves, are far more pronounced than the prominent roles of kings, soldiers, and gods. Outside of the text, kings and gods continue to dictate stories by way of political rhetoric and violence, while minor characters have been taking space, like the streets and parks, raising their voices in a way that demands attention. Yes, Sydo prods the paradox of current times, questioning how such an aftermath can exist when the unremitting characteristics of global capitalism rage on to the tune of business as usual. Yes, Sydo looks to reframe the oldest Western epic, challenge its legacy and ultimately target the pain of navigating today’s tragedies and ideologies.
The motivation behind Yes, Sydo is to completely fuse these intense affective sensations into another art form they are defining as "intertextual sound." Intertexual meaning relating to or involving a relationship between texts and sound meaning the sensation evoked by the oscillation in pressure propagated in a medium. Intertextual sound is an experiment in making new sensations at a time in crisis when new sensations in abundance are needed most.
Send + Receive 2024, photo by Robert Szkolnciki
A SO-CALLED GROUP STATEMENT to be re-tuned throughout 2024:
Collaborations are endless learning. You can be so close to somebody, so close to learning somebody. Like being in bands with close friends might be "too close," but too estranged is No good. With "too close" you can overstep boundaries, making yourself look silly. This is Yes good. You can have a chance [because of time] for a re-do: comparing 20 years ago to now, for instance, where You left in a huff only to return with better boundaries. Now, less about egos, now, more about hanging out, now, and being together, now.
Collaborations are a part of everything You do. You continue to learn a lot about: relational successes and failures. Collaboration looks different in the "ART WORLD" where relations are hinged on monetary terms. This is No good. Everything works best where there is a shared understanding, a shared goal, with [copacetic] communication styles. Where there is generative freedom - the opposite of restrictive. When there are a lot of people [more than 6?] it means You might enter a [hive mind like state] and edit ideas to fit someone else's wants. This is No good. For example, pink/purple. For example, one's proximity to a pumpkin [read Voegelin on "Hearing Subjectivities"] will ensure various points of praxis are known and felt. As long as You are listening.
Editing, don't forget, is a collaboration, even though it might feel different to You. Maybe it's not the same as, say, doing live improv performances with musicians and texts. It feels nice, real nice, when everyone is listening to each other, when everyone is working within rhythms. Or not. Regardless, there is a sense of presence. For example, collaboration with the dead. For example, skin/no skin.
For example, You don't work well with others. You facilitate workshops where there is a clear pedagogy at work, where You help people work on the piece to put out into the world. People, but not You, are afraid to be direct with communication. People, not You, are taken aback by direct communication. Good communication = direct communication = clarity = we know the difference between what we're trying to do vs. not shoehorning things too much. With direct communication non-clarity is eliminated - that’s a space of impulse. Amorphousness. This is Yes Yes good.
You want to be in someone's skin [that must be love]. The worst is when you are reminded you are separate [that must be love too]. This is YES NO good.
WHO IS SYDO? (Pronounced SIGH-D’OH or SAY-D’OH)
What/Who is emergent in writing? Firstly, LaFrance has written this text. Secondly, LaFrance + Rose are using this text. Thirdly, You don't have anything other than this text (read Capilano Review) to discern the quality of the characters, their motivations. You don’t have any other textual information. In other words, there’s no character study outside of the text. In other words, You only have the Security Incident Report, not the Incident. In other words, You have the Trauma memoir but not the Event.
and what of a graphic score?
Josh: I mean, like, I have a, you know, cursory knowledge relationship of a variety of existing graphic scores. Crumb, Xenakis. And then also like the graphical representations of Reich and Eno.
I have an idea of what we’re doing, a vision of what we’re doing, from the process something else will emerge, but I also have an idea of what we’re doing might look like.
That’s what comes up for me.
I think where some novelty to what we’re doing is the way text will be used in the score.
I feel there is a graphic notation that uses, bends and manipulates standard notation, falls under the category of the completely abstract and definitely some that incorporates textual instruction.
I think where the text becomes the abstracted visual element that may reference standard notation, like making things that are suggestive of, reminiscent of, the symbols used in standard notation out of text is something that’s interesting to me. It’s like making an abstraction of both things, of the letters into other things, and standard notation by constructing them out of other symbols.
In more theoretical or higher level thinking, I think that graphic notation offers something to the untrained musician, the classically trained. You don’t have to read music, you interpret it like a piece of art, feeling, [passion,] inference.
It offers an accessible way into something.
Danielle: As long as you can see it.
[And then they talked about making a part of the score textured.]
A so-called group statement on accessibility
Dynamic as in not a one time conversation, as in a constant conversation. Honing a sensitivity to how sonic stuff gets left out of the conversation. As in, quieter doesn’t mean less intense. As in, the person with the accessibility needs does not get removed from the conversation. Dynamic is another way to say not static. One need is for a physical thing, another is for a digital thing. Both are desirable, both are possible. What isn't normal should be. Write margins in the notes. Play with frequency, play with amplitude. Build content from day one that can flex on a scale. Immerse in the good stuff. Universal accessibility isn't possible, so we better get started. Create abundant points of access. Every interpretation is dynamic. As in, make yours appropriate for anyone you like. It's anyone's retooling. We ask that accessibility always be your first consideration, your starting point.
Reading/Listening Group
In 2023, LaFrance + Rose led a 6 month public reading/listening group that studies Emily Wilson’s translation of Odyssey, where invitees collectively critiqued its cultural significance as it was intervened by other texts and sounds and presently unfolding contexts. The reading/listening group is a means to produce the foundational material for the inter/intratextual sound component of Yes, Sydo.
Wednesday, may 17 6:30 p.m. room 2205 149 e hastings sfu woodwards
Odyssey Books 1 + 2 + “Unlikely Publics: On the Edge of Appearance,” from Brandon LaBelle’s Sonic Agency: Sound and Emergent Forms of Resistance +
How do we sense when we are heard beyond a vibration in the air that causes a bone to hum towards a time when “common sense” meant listening through the heart? Our devices hear us because we are closer than we realize, mapping out another form of call and response where we get to keep our tongues. So flap them, but do not honk them. Meanwhile, Aristotle laments that Homer has taught poets how to lie, and we say a chorus of anonymous and illiterate ancient Greek bards could teach us how to abolish authority.
Monday, May 29 6:30 p.m. room 2205 149 e hastings sfu woodwards
Odyssey Books 3 + 4 + Introduction + The ‘Unread’ Homer: Derek Walcott’s Omeros and The Odyssey: A Stage Version,” from Justine MCCONNELL’s Black Odysseys: The Homeric Odyssey in the African Diaspora since 1939 +
Brandon LaBelle asks, “What particular ethical and agentive positions or tactics may be adopted from the experiences we have of listening and being heard?” Sound here is used to problematize visibility as a legitimating feature of being a part of the polis. Meanwhile, Derek Walcott muses, “What is needed is not new names for old things, or old names for old things, but the faith of using the old names anew.” Repetition, but different? Everything must go and building something new in the shell of the old. Language is a system of violence when a signifier is placed into “anew” as it places limits. Here’s a small adjustment. This epic was never the master’s tool to begin with, not that there is a beginning.
Wednesday, JUNE 14th 6:30 p.m. Toast collective 242 east pender
Odyssey Books 5 + 6 + “The itinerant,” from Brandon LaBelle’s Sonic Agency: Sound and Emergent Forms of Resistance +
Our first encounter with Odysseus, the ever-cunning son of pain, finds him furtively sobbing in grief. We will not be privy to his story until we wash his chest, oil his feet, thrust a feast upon his gob. These hospitable (xenia) moves will ritualise our connection, only then can we be friends “as close as any brother.” Like dinner, what do these stories serve if not the function of myth providing a cautionary tale to those who do not abide by [the tyranny of] custom, a precursor to law as it has become written.
Monday, June 26 6:30 p.m. Toast collective 242 east pender
Odyssey Books 7 + 8 + “The meaninglesSness of pain” + “the poetics of pain,” from byung-chul han’s The palliative society +
Our love-hate relationship with Byung-Chul Han reaches a crescendo whenever he waxes poetic about poetry. Brandon LaBelle, also, lingers on poetry as an antidote. This story is as old as Homer. The former cries "pain is meaningless" when there is no narrative-produced threshold to rub against, resist. The latter is hopeful for versioning a future hybrid itinerant formation through and beyond neoliberal capitalism. Meanwhile, we prefer the word "pain" to the word "trauma" due to the way pain can be located and referred. To the pain: psychic, chronic, historical, in the ass.
wednesday, JULY 12 6:30 p.m. Toast collective 242 east pender
Odyssey Books 9 + 10 + “Music, Mourning, and War: Henry K Gorecki’s Third Symphony and the Politics of Remembering,” from Maria Cizmic’s Performing Pain: Music and Trauma in Eastern Europe +
Maria Cizmic articulates how music is used as a vehicle of repair without any illusory push towards catharsis. Dissonance resides within Gorecki's score when uncontaminated by visual elements that force affect's hand. The aestheticization of pain and trauma renders its expression further mute. Elaine Scarry's liberalism scares us, and her phenomenological writing is compelling to the point we couldn't drop the descriptor. No words can do pain justice, it is inexpressible, any scale is meaningless when a world is destroyed.
Monday, July 24 6:30 p.m. Toast collective 242 east pender
Odyssey Books 11 + 12 + “The Structure of Torture: The Conversion of Real Pain into the Fiction of Power,” from Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World +
Now at the midpoint of Odyssey, we find Odysseus reaching for the right words to tell his story. With earwax drained we listen while questioning what it means to ascribe our current contexts onto the epic. Our plot still stands: continue skepticism, be lured by textual serendipity, and always cheat, always be “not what is in that script.” It is exciting to catch Odysseus in a lie to his men similarly to catching a boss to her workers. How is his story a response to a kind of interrogation? After his body has been furnished, he can't refuse confession.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2 6:30 p.m. ACCESS GALLERY 222 EAST GEORGIA
Odyssey Books 13 + 14 + “WRITING ABOUT MUSICAL INTERSUBJECTIVITY,” From Dylan Robinson’s Hungry Listening Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23 6:30 p.m. ACCESS GALLERY 222 EAST GEORGIA
Odyssey Books 15 + 16 + of hospitality: anne dufourmantelle invites jacques derrida to respond
You put out a spread as good as one would find in any court off ancient Greece. You discussed Dylan Robinson, Jacques Derrida, and Anne Dufourmantelle, noting how the form as hospitable praxis either met the call sprung from the writing’s philosophy, or not. You thought about how the best music like the best writing invites you in with the familiar, a known quantity that holds in contradiction within it the alien foreign simultaneity of complexity. Meanwhile, you become stranger the more prey you invite in.
WEDNESDAY, September 6 6:30 p.m. ACCESS GALLERY 222 EAST GEORGIA
Odyssey Books 17 + 18 + “Hearing Subjectivities: Bodies, Forms and Formlessness,” from Salomé Voegelin’s The Political Possibility of Sound +
You, swineherd, are not what you seem. Your splendid tales are, however, working. At your feet is everything you could ever want, and more. You’ve tricked all your chosen favourites, almost your next of kin. You remain a stranger indefinitely, even upon recognition, you are never known. You remember Helen on your wedding night, she always brings the best gifts lest you forget the consequences of your choices. Ten years of rage, and a further ten of regret. You, experienced in pain: “The worst things humans suffer is homelessness; we must endure this life because of desperate hunger.”
WEDNESDAY, September 20 6:30 p.m. ACCESS GALLERY 222 EAST GEORGIA
Odyssey Books 19 + 20 + “Exigent Sadism,” from Avgi Saketopoulou’s Sexuality Beyond Consent +
It seems our skepticism has derailed us from imagining other possible worlds. Through sound, Salome Voegelin invited us to untether our selves from social arrangements by participating in sonic disruption with other unfixed selves disinterested in pining for legitimacy through fixed structures. With a request to slow down our thinking, Avgi Saketopoulou arranged a meeting for us to take a risk, to walk away or stay receptive to its undoing potential. Next session we’ll get it right, abandon normal and not each other.
WEDNESDAY, October 4 6:30 p.m. ACCESS GALLERY 222 EAST GEORGIA
Odyssey Books 21 + 22 + “THEORETICAL INTRODUCTION” + “The Gift of Rivalry: Potlatch," from George Bataille’s the accursed share
Meanwhile, we’ve been obediently following this “complicated man” for months. We’ve witnessed him become his namesake, the son of pain, and endure as a stranger, a Noman. He is not everyone we imagined him to be. He remains strange, from without. Odysseus has returned home to the site of familiarity, cloaked as a beggar by bright-eyed Athena, the truest of sadists before that libertine shit poetry on his cell walls. Everything is different now and the difference will soon be tested. Join us for the conclusion. Come equipped with your mightiest switch or olive branch.